Summer Showcase at the Little Cottage

The official Google definition of Showcase is to show something in an attractive or favorable way. You don’t have to live in a mansion to love and celebrate your home. Titus 2:5 (NASB) commands the older women to encourage the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home. Summer Showcase at the Little Cottage is a project tour combining Americana/Patriotic and Lowcountry Beach projects and decor. Hopefully it will show my work at home and my love for my home and family in a favorable light.

We live in a beautiful place. Our little cottage is located in Beaufort, South Carolina; a little town between Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina. I’m lucky to live somewhere with a rich history and beach access. The Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot is barely a mile from our house. If I stand in my back yard early in the morning I can hear the recruits shooting their guns at the firing range. The scenery and vegetation here is fabulous as well. You can see the live oaks dripping with Spanish moss above our tin roof and the gorgeous full moon over the water in the pictures above.

Because we are a one-income family, we’ve had to slowly improve our home over the years. You can read about my journey from public school teacher to stay-at-home mom in Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom, the Hard Way. I bought the black-eyed susans 12 years ago at an end of season sale at Lowes. As you can see, I like things that look time-worn. We bought white rock for all the flower beds after receiving a windfall this spring.

I like to include decorative details that require a closer look. It’s nice when people have to look around a little bit to see everything. The patriotic flag is a small touch with a big impact. Since I made the Uncle Sam Paver as a guest post for another blog, I decided to make a Beachy Americana Flag for my own Love My Little Cottage Blog (subscribe here). My goal for this post is not only to showcase my own style, but to encourage you to love and celebrate your own.

Time to go inside. Let’s start with the living room. At one time, our cottage was only 1100 square feet. We bought it in 1995 when we had one 11 month-old child. Twenty-five years later, we have five children and 600 more square feet. The living room is part of the new addition. My father-in-law built the mantel and fireplace framing with scrap wood, putty, and paint. The seashell garland came from Oriental Trading.

You can see part of the gallery wall that I’ve been working on over the leather couch. It’s a combination of covered bridge art, paintings, and drawings. I prefer authentic art over mass manufactured art. However, there is a combination of both in my home. Part of my needlework art collection is on the wall above the loveseat. I like fluffy, fuzzy pillows, even in the summer. The painted picnic basket adorns the marble side table.

The next group of pictures were taken in the piano room. This room was our living room before the addition was built. Now it has the piano, the computer, and my maple china cabinet. Located by the front door, it’s kind of an overflow or walk-through room. As part of my work-at-home routine, I paint flower pots, watering cans, and customized sneakers and sell them in my Love My Little Cottage ETSY Shop. The blog and ETSY store are like sisters, because they work together. I advertise my ETSY projects on the blog and link tutorial blog posts to the products I sell. I began painting and selling things at craft shows in the 1990s. Read Dear Lord, What Did I Learn From Doing Craft Shows here.

Sunflowers and Americana were a trend this year, so I combined the two for my 4th of July table. I paired strawberry motifs with some vintage bicentennial eagle mugs for the summer coffee corner.

I hope you enjoyed Summer Showcase at the Little Cottage, and I pray for encouragement for all of those at home during the coronavirus this 4th of July!

Blessings,

Kristie

Shop This Showcase

*I am an Amazon Associate and will receive a small percentage of each sale.